


A Hundred Arms, a Hundred Years

by jeremystollemyheart



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Aromanticism, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Barricade day and pride are in the same month, M/M, Modern AU, Reincarnation AU, aroace enjolras, coincidence? i think not, queerplatonic Enjolras/combeferre, queerplatonic enjolferre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeremystollemyheart/pseuds/jeremystollemyheart
Summary: “One would have said, to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance, that he had already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse. He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a witness.”It’s well past midnight and Combeferre is watching Enjolras sleep.





	A Hundred Arms, a Hundred Years

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ace Mis Week, but posting for Barricade Day. 
> 
> Heavily inspired by “100 Years” by Florence and the Machine

It’s well past midnight and Combeferre is watching Enjolras sleep. 

Well. Watching is a generous word. In the dark, without his glasses, he can only make out shapes. But he knows Enjolras’ shape better than any other, and he watches his chest rise and fall rhythmically, and at the same time almost forgets to breathe himself. 

It’s been a hard day of a bad month. Some days Enjolras burns like a wildfire, others he smolders like an ember. In June it is as though he tries to do both at once. As though there is some cell-deep memory that calls to him from another time and place and whispers of war and blood and revolution. 

There is a strangeness to June, a feeling of bombs going off. 

Enjolras shifts in his sleep. He murmurs something, almost words, and Combeferre reaches out to run deft fingers through luxurious tangles of long blond curls, lulling him back into peaceful sleep before he can awaken in the throes of something that isn’t quite a nightmare. Silence resumes, gentle and dark and intimate in a way that Combeferre does not have the words to describe (even when he stays up late at night looking for them). 

It’s the same linguistic gap he feels when the girl who works at the coffee shop downtown asks “what” they are, and he gestures as though to pluck the words out of thin air, but never quite catches them. 

“Because sometimes,” she continues, “I think you two are boyfriends. But other times...” she shrugs, interested and maybe sympathetic. His hand finds Enjolras’ instinctively. 

They are still holding on to each other, fingers entertwined, fifteen minutes later, when he whispers, “Combeferre?”

“Yes?”

“You know that I’m—I can’t—I don’t—“

“Yes.”

“Is that—“ It is so rare for Enjolras to be at a loss for words, “Is that...enough?”

“It’s more than enough,” he says, and he leans down to kiss his forehead rather than his lips.

He remembers that day vividly. They start going to a new coffee shop after that, the one on the other side town, with the name that starts with an M, which Enjolras keeps saying he remembers from somewhere, maybe childhood. 

Sometimes he gets the feeling they have lived a hundred lives before this one. Even if this is the only one where they are allowed to exist side by side, it’s alright. It’s enough. 

Enjolras is friction and flame and rough edges, but he’s also late June nights and whispered words and the way he smiles in his sleep when Combeferre touches his hair. 

There is a strangeness to June. But for the moment, Enjolras sleeps, and Combeferre watches him. That is all either of them need.


End file.
